Silverberg: Graduates need planning, determination and dedication

Friday

May 24, 2013 at 12:01 AM

By KATHY SILVERBERG

As hundreds of thousands of graduates from high schools, technical schools and colleges across the land prepare to enter the world of work, the earth beneath their feet is shifting at a startling pace.

An improving economy must be encouraging to many job seekers, including those with newly minted diplomas, and yet the realities of the working world are not what they once were even as recently as a decade ago.

Americans seem much more optimistic about the economy as the housing industry, among others, begins a recovery, but the job market has been lagging with too many unemployed, underemployed or discouraged dropouts from the world of work.

Improvements in technology are certainly part of the reason that, in some sectors, fewer workers are needed to accomplish needed tasks. Forbes reported in November 2012 that productivity had improved 2.2 percent in the United States since the recession began, but it has been accomplished with nearly 4 million fewer workers. The article went on to quote Mark Perry, professor of economics at the University of Michigan, who suggested that sluggish job creation is likely to continue as real GNP per worker and corporate profits continue to increase.

None of this sounds too encouraging to someone facing the start of a working life. A recent article in this newspaper indicated that the employment picture is bright in a few fields, health care for example, but in many others the jobs are few and far between. Couple that with the debt that some college graduates accumulated to pay for their education and already life in the real world is beginning to look bleak.

But wait. Isn't graduation supposed to be an occasion for celebration? The answer is yes, and with a bit of planning, determination and dedication there will be rewarding work waiting when the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" have died away.

Nearly every graduate wants to be a successful job seeker, whether his or her immediate goal is a part-time job or the beginning of a lifelong career. It can be difficult at the tender age of 18 or even 22 to know what kind of work will be most appropriate or rewarding. Still, there is value in researching available positions and knowing requirements in the way of qualifications, talents and abilities. The closer an applicant can come to matching those specifications, the better his or her chances will be of landing a job.

While targeting a particular field is important, it is good to remember that jobs change, careers change -- some drastically -- and new ones are created.

Flexibility, an appetite for learning new things and an eagerness to keep up with technological changes can make the difference is finding and keeping a good job. A decade ago, no one could have imagined looking for a job as a mobile app developer or a social media manager or a consumer data miner, and yet those are hot careers today.

A few constants

But no matter where the job search leads, a few constants about life are good to keep in mind. First, work, no matter how rewarding or lucrative or ego-building, is not life. It is a part of life, and an important one, but so are family and friends, faith, hope and charity. Making time for all of these, finding a way to balance the many roles a person is called to fill in life, can be a challenge, but as the years race by, there will be rewards for those who find a way to make it work.

Many of those who found and kept jobs through the difficult recession have worked harder than ever before and put in more hours at work to make up for the people who were laid off. They felt so grateful to be employed when many around them were not that they did whatever it took to keep the job, paying a price by neglecting other parts of life.

Now may be the time to catch up, to recalibrate life goals and to realize that work life can be all the more rewarding when it is tempered by cultivating other relationships and fulfilling other responsibilities. That balance will look different for each individual, and when demands seem to be coming from every segment, it may seem out of reach.

But just as commencement is a beginning, not an end, graduation is a chance to chart a course that is honest and true. The activist Marian Wright Edelman had some advice worth considering: "Never work just for money or power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night."

Kathy Silverberg is the former publisher of the Herald-Tribune's southern editions. Email: kathy.silverberg@comcast.net

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